Harold Chapman
The Beat Hotel: first visit to Gregory Corso

... So I go in to this crazy cafe where I was immediately pounced upon by a tiny fierce gray haired little old lady who glared at me suspiciously and roared out a stream of incomprehensible French. Handing her a piece of paper, I pointed clearly at the word, at the same time speaking loudly "G r e g o r y  C o r s o". Holding it out at arm's length she peered at it shortsightedly and suddenly broke into a beaming radiant smile, and clutching the piece of paper to her breast, she shrieked, "Ah, le petit Monsieur Corso-o-o!" and proceeded to gabble a stream of complicated instructions which went in one ear and out through the other. I noticed that she was sticking her forefinger vigorously up in the air, so I figured that as she was straining very hard to get it up high, he must be on the top floor.
I wandered down this pitch dark corridor nervously feeling the walls. What a strange place this was, no fucking lights anywhere. Or at least there were light switches but they didn't work. I came to the bottom of the stairs. This was the first time I had ever seen real French stairs. I had seen them many times in sordid movies, but they didn't look anything like that. These looked like something out of a Grimm's Fairy Tale or maybe even something out of a Frankenstein movie. Everything was painted a dirty creamy grey; anyway I could hardly see, it was so dark. The windows were cracked and dirty, uncleaned for years probably. The walls were cracked and peeling, and the stairway spiralled almost like a soft Dalí landscape in this strange astral light
So I went up and up and came to the top. Here it became really complicated... I could see the top floor was not really the top floor, but that above the top floor was an additional construction that they must have squeezed in somehow to make some extra money. I could see two doors but how to get to them was rather a problem. Bending double and almost walking on my hands and knees, I walked along a gallery and bending even lower I eased my way under a large dent in the ceiling which had obviously been made by people banging their heads on it for the last 200 years, and by stepping up the steps to the room opposite to the one which I was going to, I was able to step across to the other steps, and arrived with my eye at keyhole level. Peering through the keyhole I could see that it was blocked up which I figured must have been done on purpose. Or maybe someone had hung a coat on the door.
Anyway, the place stank of piss, like the whole hotel, for at various levels in the circular wall of this well-like stair shaft were these doors from which this dreadful smell came blowing out. Mind you there were also strange exotic smells coming through the keyholes of many of the rooms, delicious oriental food smells, smells of frying; in fact, one could even hear the sound of frying, and at the top where I was the smell was the strongest, of hot air. But the food really smelt nice, just like the smell one gets when one walks down alleyways late at night behind expensive hotels. Delicious. Strange, though. Why was everybody cooking? Why were there so many different smells of cooking? I would have thought there would have been the distinct smell of French cooking, which I had already smelt in the streets. But this smelt Chinese, in fact come to think of it, on my way up, I had seen one of the doors covered by those erotic beaded curtains that hang outside oriental brothels always, or at least in Warner Brothers' Oriental Brothels. And there was a window, which had a red curtain hung over it, with Chinese writing on it. In fact come to think of it, all the way up one side of the stairwell, were these sinister barred windows, like cells; some of them had half open windows and some of them had tightly shut windows which appeared to be painted over and blacked out. What a crazy place; the steps were grey and worn; on the floor were faded, cracked red tiles.
The door number was stencilled on crudely, in black. The door itself was painted a dim battleship grey, covered with faded pencil scribbles. I rapped on the door. YEAH, COMONIN. I opened the door, the room was fantastic. lt was just like I had always thought of them, attics for starving poets I mean; it was more so than the movies, more than Henry Miller even. The whole room sloped, even the floor; a large brown beam went across the ceiling, hanging from it was a faded chipped plaster angel. The room was done out in a sort of faded browny red, even the floor was a faded browny red; cracked tiles. The walls were covered with picture postcards of the old masters. A table was made out of a Da Vinci cartoon covered in cracked glass. On it was standing a globe of the world, glowing brightly. The room was lit by the traditional naked bulb; it looked about 25 watts, though the fly shit on it would cut it down a bit.
Some more light was coming through a skylight, not much. A sort of nave led off what could be described as the main room, I suppose. At the end of it was an ill-fitting rotting window frame; more light came through this, in fact it was a pity that the window panes were dirty... I slipped my meter out of my pocket and took a quick reading. It was a tenth at 1.5. A pity all I had was a contax with a 50 mm lens. I could have done with a wide angle, blast it. There were also bottles standing on the table. Was I alone? Maybe. He had a white shirt on, sitting buddha like on the iron bed. I managed to squeeze into a corner and after making the usual jazz about me, you, why, how, what for and so forth I was able to relax and watch. Thank God he talked. What about, everything under the sun. Wonderful. His hands were waving about like a crazy Frenchman on the movies, blurr, lovely. So I shot off about a roll, and asked if I could wander around with him and just shoot off pictures when I felt like it ...
We left ...

First published in: Harold Chapman, The Beat Hotel,
gris banal, éditeur, 1984.